Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Sitjar, Buenaventura

SITJAR, Buenaventura (seet'-har), Spanish missionary, b. in the island of Majorca, 9 Dec., 1739; d. in San Antonio, Cal., 3 Sept., 1808. He was a member of the Franciscan order, came as a missionary to America, and founded in 1771 the mission of San Antonio, and in 1797 that of San Miguel. With the assistance of Father Miguel Pieras, he composed a vocabulary of the Telamé or Sextapay language. This work forms the seventh volume of John G. Shea's “Library of American Linguistics” (New York, 1861), and was published separately under the title of “Vocabulary of the Language of the San Antonio Missions” (1863).